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Can you compare it to any of the other places you've worked to give some perspective to your comparison? Like "isn't much culture" compared to working at IBM o

Can you compare it to any of the other places you've worked to give some perspective to your comparison? Like "isn't much culture" compared to working at IBM or "isn't much culture" compared to Google/Zappos/RedGate?

jw_ 13y ago
I found there was a culture of constant overtime and firefighting. I also found they made a point of letting people know they were replaceable when they came onboard. It's a big company though - my experience at other large corporations was that this sort of thing varies wildly from team to team. The only other "culture" at Amazon was the constant cult-like references to a set of principles - people would actually talk about "bias for action", "frugality" and whatever in their normal daily conversations. It was kind of strange. Happy to be working elsewhere now.
hirammcdaniels 13y ago
Amazon has a certain body of engineers that get into the official culture, get involved in broomball and wing-eating competitions and the like, but there are far more engineers who pretty much ignore the whole thing. As far as I could tell, the biggest piece of their culture is now a bunch of bitter engineers on internal mailing lists slowly working up the courage to leave for more enjoyable companies. That said, different teams at Amazon were SUPER different. Some teams went out drinking together twice a week, some teams were super extraverted and into video games, but many other teams were a bunch of quiet, serious introverts. TEAM fit was super important. This of course absolutely sucks for you if you get roped into interviewing for one team and you're a much better culture fit for a different team. Too bad. Rejected. IBM has a culture, it's just a boring culture. Pretty much a bad IBM culture fit is a person who's passionate about something in life. I'm sure there are parts of IBM that are different (it's huge), but I was just glad that I didn't have to wear a suit. Google-like companies are pretty much the opposite of IBM. If you don't have some weird interest you're passionate about, you kind of stick out.
- RankingMember 13y ago
  "Pretty much a bad IBM culture fit is a person who's passionate about something in life." I had to pick out this quote because it's hilarious. :)
armon 13y ago
I've also worked in university research group settings, as well as a few startups in SV. I'd say there is a much stronger sense of the "whole" in these smaller groups, where everybody feels personally responsible for the success of projects. The smaller groups also take on the dynamics of the members, and the more eccentric personalities shape the culture and make the group a more fun and interesting place. You think of coworkers as friends first, coworkers second. At Amazon, you don't get any of that. It is a very dry culture. It's clear that everybody is a coworker first. Eccentricity is largely looked down on (after all you need to worry about reviews and promotions, etc). Instead you get a sort of blah corporate culture, everything is grey, you talk about frugality as if somehow that's great. Rarely do you find super motivated engineers. Most people are fairly jaded, and aren't that committed to the success of projects. It's just a 9 to 5.

jw_ 13y ago

I found there was a culture of constant overtime and firefighting. I also found they made a point of letting people know they were replaceable when they came onboard. It's a big company though - my experience at other large corporations was that this sort of thing varies wildly from team to team. The only other "culture" at Amazon was the constant cult-like references to a set of principles - people would actually talk about "bias for action", "frugality" and whatever in their normal daily conversations. It was kind of strange. Happy to be working elsewhere now.

hirammcdaniels 13y ago

Amazon has a certain body of engineers that get into the official culture, get involved in broomball and wing-eating competitions and the like, but there are far more engineers who pretty much ignore the whole thing. As far as I could tell, the biggest piece of their culture is now a bunch of bitter engineers on internal mailing lists slowly working up the courage to leave for more enjoyable companies. That said, different teams at Amazon were SUPER different. Some teams went out drinking together twice a week, some teams were super extraverted and into video games, but many other teams were a bunch of quiet, serious introverts. TEAM fit was super important. This of course absolutely sucks for you if you get roped into interviewing for one team and you're a much better culture fit for a different team. Too bad. Rejected. IBM has a culture, it's just a boring culture. Pretty much a bad IBM culture fit is a person who's passionate about something in life. I'm sure there are parts of IBM that are different (it's huge), but I was just glad that I didn't have to wear a suit. Google-like companies are pretty much the opposite of IBM. If you don't have some weird interest you're passionate about, you kind of stick out.

RankingMember 13y ago
"Pretty much a bad IBM culture fit is a person who's passionate about something in life." I had to pick out this quote because it's hilarious. :)

armon 13y ago

I've also worked in university research group settings, as well as a few startups in SV. I'd say there is a much stronger sense of the "whole" in these smaller groups, where everybody feels personally responsible for the success of projects. The smaller groups also take on the dynamics of the members, and the more eccentric personalities shape the culture and make the group a more fun and interesting place. You think of coworkers as friends first, coworkers second. At Amazon, you don't get any of that. It is a very dry culture. It's clear that everybody is a coworker first. Eccentricity is largely looked down on (after all you need to worry about reviews and promotions, etc). Instead you get a sort of blah corporate culture, everything is grey, you talk about frugality as if somehow that's great. Rarely do you find super motivated engineers. Most people are fairly jaded, and aren't that committed to the success of projects. It's just a 9 to 5.